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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: KDE rough edges - file-types in KDE 3
From:       Ian Wadham <ianw2 () optusnet ! com ! au>
Date:       2007-09-20 5:53:01
Message-ID: 200709201553.01876.ianw2 () optusnet ! com ! au
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On Wed, 19 Sep 2007 06:10 pm, Robert Knight wrote:
> > Ian Wadham wrote:
> > >  I'm hoping KDE 4.0 will be a lot easier to use ... 
> Time for some expectations management.
>
It's OK.  I'm old and I no longer believe in fairies ... :-)

> On 19/09/2007, Arnold Krille <kde@arnoldarts.de> wrote
> > Yeah, that is what gnome is always thinking about. Making it easy with
> > very little options. Actually people choose KDE over Gnome because they
> > can customize it more and can change more settings...
> Some options are much more important that others however.  If a dialog
> has too many buttons, boxes, spinners, diaogs, lists and who knows
> what else, it becomes harder to find and change the most important
> ones.  In other words, if you throw too much stuff into a dialog or
> window the 'value' or 'usefulness' of it goes down.
>
Absolutely, Robert.  Spot on.  Option as much as you like, but please
put the more esoteric stuff in some kind of "appendix" or "footnote".

> The question then is not just about 'more options' or 'less options',
> its about users from the target audience being able to set the
> application up the way they want it with the minimum of effort.
>
Loud cheers from me, Robert ... :-)

> > it is really the task of the distribution to provide sensible defaults
>
> I disagree.  The distributions have a quite enough other things to
> worry about without having to spent months finding and adjusting every
> inappropriate default, only for every other distribution to repeat the
> effort.  There is also the problem that distribution maintainers are
> not necessarily knowledgeable in the domain of the application, nor do
> they know about all the user feedback the developer has received.
>
I can only add that, if distros are not choosing good defaults for the KDE
desktop, it is KDE that looks bad to the end-user.  So maybe KDE guys
should be making some "strong suggestions" to the distros on how to
configure KDE for a good all-round user experience.

All the best, Ian W.
 
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